Today Yandex announced the addition of look-alike audience targeting to its growing list of ad targeting capabilities.

Advertisers can now target new users whose online behavior is similar to that of their own site visitors who have take a specific action such as completing a purchase or adding items to the shopping cart. Both Google and Facebook also offer audience targeting based on attributes of an advertiser’s existing visitor or customer base.

Yandex’s behavior analytics technology, Crypta, powers look-alike targeting by discovering patterns in online behavior and locating other users exhibiting similar behaviors. Audiences from Crypta are then matched as look-alikes based on the advertiser’s own visitor data captured in Metrica, Yandex’s web analytics product.

To use look-alike targeting, sites must receive a minimum of 15,000 visitors per week for the technology to receive enough data to find patterns.

According to the company, clothing retailer Quelle increased click-through rates on their banner ads by 300% during beta testing. Another test partner, KIA Motors is said to have seen a 145 percent lift in delayed conversions when using look-alike targeting.

Yandex display ad campaigns are served across the Yandex Advertising Network plus nine of Yandex’s own properties including Yandex.Mail, Yandex.News, Yandex.Maps, Yandex.Weather.

The company says it is planning to offer automated optimization for look-alike targeted campaigns in the near future.

About The Author

As Third Door Media's paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.